Facebook Blues

I have a profile on Facebook. There are lovely people with whom I interact. Today, I used the friends search to look up old, old acquaintances, names from 30 years ago, childhood friends.

Something in me wants to see the shining lights they’ve all become. Something in me would love to know they all had wonderful adventures and are living this life with gusto.

Life is very strange. It often meanders.

I had a dream last night that I walked through a neighborhood, marked with southern California vegetation and style.

I saw a gathering of children and mothers. I looked up on a hill towards a large building. It was the Church of Disney. All the young girls were dressed in short Cinderella drag and their faces were molded over in makeup that obscured their natural features.

I was disgusted by the existence of this confluence of religion, worship and fantasy-based commerce.

Many of us grow up with a full set of ideas about the world that are the result of film, TV, books. We can have a tough time telling fiction from reality.

Disney products, especially, altered the minds of many young women. Stories of Prince Charming, Sleeping Beauty and of abandoned children who always manage to find their way back home set up certain expectations.

Enchanting, dramatic and sentimental films, Hollywood classics made us feel we live in a very special world. I still believe I am wearing Hollywood-colored glasses a great deal of the time. I think thta’s why I hate to go to WalMart and feel the big contradiction.

John Casavettes said this: “Maybe there never was an America maybe it was all Frank Capra.

We love stories and stories are good. I make up stories in my head all the time, about people I don’t know, about the beautiful grooviness I imagine for a particular setting I see. I long to have the story of someone I’ve known have a sweet icing-on-the-cake ending.

I could find few from my past on Facebook but one really sad find was the present day photo of a formerly sweet, simple hippie boy from my hometown.

We lived on a commune in the high desert. His girlfriend was the coolest person I’d ever met. He had a beautiful doggie, a chocolate Lab, and an interesting best pal from our shared home town of Santa Ana.

Both of us are Aries, too.

In his Facebook photo he was all got up in a suit and tie. I got the vibe of a minister. I got the vibe of “please somebody love me,” a sort of desperate I’m-looking-for-women intent. I guess there’s nothing wrong with that. Maybe this former hippie lad has more Pisces than I. Maybe he could never find the right bowl to swim in.

I know that although he married the cool girl and they had a couple of babies they eventually divorced. I found that out reading the cool girl’s obituary last year.

I’m so thankful my partner is right for me and strong in all the way that matter to me and that we share the same values — art for art’s sake, nonmaterialism, a longing for peace, a respect for all creatures and entities of the earth and beyond. That was a hippie mentality but the world sometimes warps the tender. Some of the stories we hear send us onto false paths. We’ve all been at least part way down a wrong road.

You can let your light shine no matter where you are walking and maybe this guy, this former hippie youth shines in his own way, even trussed up like a banker. We all go through changes. Hell, I wear ties.

The Church of Disney and Capra have given me a lot to wake up from but there is a perfection in all effort no matter how sloppy, and even if the picture comes out a little bent and fuzzy it’s all good work.